Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (55 page)

SuperE led us to a side exit to the bar. The large doorway pointed directly toward the poor part of town. Metal roofs were haphazardly placed all over. "That's the slums, I toss the rowdy ones out there and see who gets the most distance. If you can beat my score, I'll pay off some of his tab, If you can't, you give me that little critter as compensation."

Dusk hissed at the big human from his shoulder perch. I raised a metal hand up and rubbed the
[Messenger's Pet]
soothingly.

"Yeah. He'll make a good mascot. I've been looking for something unique for the bar." The white skinned man nodded then folded beefy arms across his chest.

"Who am I throwing?" I asked, trying to get a feel for my chances.

"Don't care."

"So, any random person, out there?" My words were aimed at making sure our wager would be completely clear. It felt like a bad idea. Jeeves kept its face passive and Treasure was busy elsewhere.

"You throw someone, out there, one chance, his bar tab versus your lizard." SuperE pointed. It annoyed me watching his giant finger direct my attention from one object to the next in time with the reiteration.

All sorts of people were in the room. Different races, players, and NPCs of all types. There was no concise way to gauge who could be thrown the furthest. Plus all the NPCs were out, they might actually die from that kind of distance. Assuming I found a way to put my all into.

"What do you think, Dusk?" I had no idea what would happen. The bet was ridiculous to even consider. Eventually, my head just shook. "No, I can't part with him."

Dusk made a weirdly combined bird cat noise. It sounded happy but came out garbled.

"Then I'll throw you." SuperE suddenly grabbed me.

I barely had time to blink, his hands were extremely powerful and it felt like my shoulder was being crushed. Hurriedly I activated
[Power Armor]
. The man grunted a little as my skin toughened up by a layer of armor defining itself all over my surface. It didn't stop SuperE from dragging me closer to the door in preparation for tossing.

Both feet tried to find purchase and
[Anchor]
activated next. The bar floor met a high enough metal concentration that my feet were drawn down. There wasn't enough purchase. SuperE roared out loud and charged for the doorway. I managed to get an arm loose and grabbed onto more metal framing before he reached throwing speed. The bar counter was my savior. Being on a space station certainly helped for material composition.

Resisting made SuperE start banging on my arm. Pain flared up as his meaty hands managed to deal damage even through the
[Power Armor]
. His [
Brawn]
character stat must have been through the roof. We sat there awkwardly deadlocked as he tried to drag me to the door for the tossing. My fingers left dents in the counter top.

There were still a few things to try. I could swing at him with a sword if my hand had been free. The wrist laser arm was currently being crushed. I tried to activate one of my other abilities, one that Iron had given me.

[Material Conversion]
went into play with a blast of noise like a microwave going off. Whirring started as it felt like something was being sucked through my hand. The counter lost mass and started giving way. At the same time, my body felt heavier by far. The energy bar on my screen started dropping, not only from abilities being used but the maximum size was also going down.

I stared at a message in confusion.

Soon I was nearly double my original mass. The metal muscles I had been so proud of seemed to swell to bursting. I felt like every bad workout video gone wrong. My chest felt like it had comically sized boobs that were clearly solid. Either arm became like tree trunks.

I, I was honestly kind of afraid to see what this enlarged version of me might look like. A steroid user gone absurdly wrong. Being in a
[Mechanoid]
body with this couldn't be good.

SuperE was yelling with effort. People around the bar were torn equally between laughing, shouting, and drunken stupor. I didn't know what to do in order to end this nonsense. The tall white human that had suggested a tossing contest was starting to level a real weapon in my direction.

Finally, it occurred to me that maybe turnabout was fair play. My body had grown almost triple its normal size in exchange for an empty energy bar. The floor was missing mass, and a once dingy bar counter now comprised random parts of my
[Mechanoid]
body.

I put it all to good use by reversing our situation. SuperE fit comfortably into both hands. Enough of the wall was missing that I could hurl him straight through the air. I had aimed for the second star on the right but settled for sending the player off toward slum parts unknown to me.

"What? Nooo, fuuuuuuckkkk!" he shouted while sailing through the air. His parting curse was sufficiently odd enough for me to tilt my head and wonder what had just happened.

My eyes drifted down to an absurdly muscled arm that could probably crush Jeeves' head with one squeeze. Treasure looked even smaller than before and was now rapidly scanning my body instead of the bar patrons. She appeared to be trying to hold back laughter while looking at the display on her side.

"Hehehe." A male giggled from behind me.

I was huffing from the rush of throwing the human so far. In the distance, metal roofs fell down in clatters. A crater could be seen from SuperE's landing. People behind me were clapping.

My body shook. Between
[Anchor]
,
[Power Armor]
and the restrictions of a body this size I had burned through everything in a mere forty seconds. Still, that was simply the neatest thing I had done all day. Throwing another player an absurd distance away felt great.

According to that measurement, politely provided by Advance Online's oddly timed interface, I had thrown SuperE three football fields and change. That amount of distance was bonkers. Of course, I was a twenty-foot tall man made of metal borrowed from one of the walls. Low gravity on this space station might have helped.

"Unit Hermes. I would suggest releasing all the extra mass. Treasure and I can try to repair the door while you talk to Eggman." Jeeves offered a ready solution to my recent destruction to part of this building. We were all lucky my absorption skill hadn't pulled enough mass to suck everyone into space.

I nodded and concentrated on releasing the skill. It felt like unclenching every muscle in my body. The glowing rust color to my
[Mechanoid]
body started to dim as my size decreased. Fifteen feet, then ten, and finally back to the seven-foot marker my character existed at.

Jeeves started working right away. I vaguely remembered it having a title of
[Pattern Smith]
or something similar. Those two were likely very well equipped to take care of exactly this sort of problem.

Metal pooled around my feet from a melting second skin. Some people continued clapping. I turned to Eggman and stepped away from the mess left behind.

"We need the key to Earth, to recover the Mistborn and stop some former colleagues of yours."

"Oh really, really, really?" Eggman's voice was high-pitched with excitement.

"Yes." I tried to stay calm, but my body was still recovering from that recent bout.

"Yeah. I'll go with you, I really will. But you've got to let me punch those assholes in the face, really. They knocked me out, stole my items, and left. It would really serve them right to suffer a bit of revenge." Eggman nodded. The man would have looked good with a mustache, sort of. Having a third chin jutting out might have required a less form fitting shirt, or maybe a hat to help even things out. Instead, he had goggles much like TheLittleMan had.

"Yes, for vengeance." I tried to play along, but my mind was elsewhere. This player wanted to abruptly join our crew? How weird was that? Plus he looked remarkably out of shape, worse than even I was months ago. Eggman was both a description and character name, for a human.

Nevermind, this was a video game world. He could be extremely agile for all I knew.

"Jeeves? What do you think?" I asked. The AI shrugged, Treasure didn't seem to care one way or the other. There had to be someone else who might be able to give input. In these sort of dire straits, I couldn't be sure how trustful other players were.

There were a lot of things to consider about my conversation with Beth. First was the fact that my sister was on board enough to treat my adventure like a movie. That was either hopeful, or she had finally started paying attention to more than just the letter from Xin. The two of them might be eating popcorn and making a list of things to harass me about. Once my admin access came back they would be blocked. For now, I was thankful that
[Mechanoid]
s didn't come with genitals.

"Okay." I nodded to the player, Eggman. "But you need your own ship."

"No problem," responded Eggman. He looked a bit like a mad scientist in that get up of his. I was probably the crazy one for inviting a stranger along on a mission to rescue my dead fiancée's digital ghost.

Session Sixty Two – Blue Marbles

The two
[Mechanoid]
s filled up our space gas tanks. It now contained barely enough future fossil fuel to power our flight toward Earth and maybe hit a Jump Gate out. I had no vested interest in our situation beyond keeping my allies safe and recovering the
[Mistborn]
. Soon I could return to Continue Online and my letter exchange with Xin would resume.

It felt oddly fatalistic to provide myself a lame fallback point. Worst case scenario, Jeeves might vanish into digital limbo, the three
[Mechanoid]
s with us would suffer a reset back to our home world, I would fail to resurrect Xin in some form to interact with, and my sister and niece would have a conversation topic. None of those sounded appealing.

I heaved a sigh then checked our countdown timer. We weren't going to make it in time. By these calculations and Treasure's own admission, Commander Queenshand would get to Earth first. Our ship wasn't fast enough, even with Aqua's blues and Ruby's reds locked into opposite sides of our hull. Their vehicles were helping with propulsion. Eggman's needle-like vessel hovered nearby keeping pace. At least the new player didn't slow us down.

We were screwed. Getting caught by the
[Stabinator]
sounded bad and all our timers were against us. I brought up the visual pictures of our three vessels. We were playing a grand game of chase and the odds were never in our favor.

Earth had a Jump Gate that looked different to the last four I had seen. The prior ones were giant shiny looking objects that wore shimmering energy up and down them like a lightning rod. This one appeared to be made of a light tan wood covered by mold. Giant slabs of iron were woven through it like braids or a cage. The Earth Jump Gate was one-third of the size.

"Is there anything else we can do?" I asked the two
[Mechanoid]
s behind me. My mind couldn't wrap around any of our puzzle pieces. There were no blue turtle shells or heat seeking bullets we could fire ahead.

"Negative, Unit Hermes," Jeeves said. "I haven't found an alternate solution to avoid our impending doom."

"Doom! Fantastically joyous doom!" Eggman said, happiness evident in his voice. He had used a class skill to break into our ship's communications. It thoroughly pissed Treasure off. She had furiously pressed buttons and attempted to convince Ruby and me that our human addition needed removal.